


Clandestine

by queenofhell_proserpina



Series: Cultverse [5]
Category: Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Cults, Brainwashing, Drug Abuse, F/M, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-22 15:23:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2512499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofhell_proserpina/pseuds/queenofhell_proserpina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My insides are copper; I'd kill to make them gold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Sleepless

1

i am god’s gift, but why would he bless me with  
such wit without a conscience equipped?  
\--Fall Out Boy: Fame / Infamy

Pete isn’t lying when he says there’s no master plan.

He’s said it before and he’ll say it again: he has a big fucking mouth and a lot of words to fill it. The only difference between him and a lot of other assholes out there is that somehow, between his tongue and the air, when he speaks his words turn into truth. He tells a reporter that Babyface is going to produce for them and two weeks later they’re getting the call to confirm it; he tells Panic that he’s going to sign them and suddenly he has a label imprint; he tells a kid with scars on his arms that he’s going to save him, make him better, and he’ll see that kid a year later, alive and more than alive, thriving.

Maybe it’s a blessing and maybe it’s a curse, but he can make things happen. He can affect reality with his words, not only his reality but that of everyone around him, and that’s not something he can just ignore. If he can fix even one person in this fucked up world, wake them up and make them stronger and better able to face it, then shouldn’t he? It’s something he has to do, something he was made to do; that’s why he can, why he has the power to change things. It’s there to be used, just like everything else.

He takes advantage of it sometimes, yeah. He can admit that; he’s made things happen that he maybe shouldn’t have. Like the first time he convinced Andy that they had to take care of a kid who was freaking out after a night with Pete. He’ll always remember the look in Andy’s eyes, slightly betrayed, slightly disbelieving even as they were doing it, but Pete had already said it, so it had to happen.

It was the truth—the kid had to be taken care of, there was no other option at the time, and later Andy even said that it had been the right decision, the right thing to do. Andy’s found his own justification for the mistakes, the ones who have to be taken care of; after all, the kids turn into adults one day, and by then it’s too late to change their minds, make them see the truth—if they don’t understand, if they aren’t actively fighting the problem, then they’re a part of it, and need to be eliminated. But even after all the other kids, all the other times, Pete still thinks about that look in Andy’s eyes after that first time and aches.

He can’t let them see that ache, though, the worry about whether anything he does or says or thinks is right. It comes out in late night blog entries and spilled ink on notebook paper; comes out whispered into Patrick’s ear when he’s sleeping, for him to keep but not remember; comes out as self-deprecating wit for journalists’ tape recorders, and the kids and crowds think that he’s nothing but ache and worry, and everybody else, everybody real, thinks that he’s secure in himself and the message and just concerned about how to put it into words, or concerned about how his words will be received.

There’s no right and wrong, though; no truth and lie. It’s all true, all real, all in him.

He contains multitudes.

2

i know that at some point the right words are gonna come to me.  
that they are just going to spill out.  
thats the only reason i still sit in these rented rooms in front of blank screens.  
i know deep down we can make ourselves bright.  
we can shine.  
\--blogspot journal, 3/22/2007

He’s always used his voice to influence people, from screaming for attention when he was a little kid to screaming for attention onstage. At certain points in his life he thought volume was more important than coherence—say something loud enough and everyone has to listen; write it in all caps and that’s the part everyone will know to pay attention to; live your life as a single grand gesture and nobody will focus on the small details. You’ll be bigger than life, a legend in your own time. You’ll last forever.

That’s still his philosophy, to a certain extent, but he’s known all along that what you say is more important than how loud you say it. There are certain writers whose voices are as quiet and subtle as a gas leak, whose words crawl inside of him and set up shop in his mind, who have influenced him as deeply and personally as anyone he’s actually met and spoken to in person. Writers whose words could heal or kill, depending only on the inflection, the context, the meaning behind him; words that could destroy a world or cause a revolution.

He wants to his own words to be like that, to be the cancer that grows inside, silent and insidious. Back when he sang, the message didn’t spread nearly as far or as fast because he couldn’t help but scream it out, overwhelming the meaning of his words with pure volume, the raw power of his voice and the noise behind it.

Now he has Patrick, to counter Pete’s screams with his softer, smoother, richer sound; to take Pete’s words and set them to a melody that worms its way into people’s minds; to be Pete’s voice, stronger and clearer than the one from his own throat. Still, the sound alone isn’t enough, even with Patrick’s voice; the words have to be perfect, too. Pete writes all the time, constantly, trying to get the message out of his head, trying to find that one perfect phrase that will encompass it, make it true and real instead of just this thing in his brain, this possibility.

He hasn’t found it yet, and maybe he never will, but he keeps trying, writing out the filth in his head and giving it to Patrick for him to painstakingly put into order, pulling out the glitter from the refuse to turn into diamonds.

3

we’re the therapists pumping through your speakers  
delivering just what you need  
\--Fall Out Boy: Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year

The first time Pete realized how strongly his own words can affect people, he was eighteen, a few weeks away from college. He’d picked up a girl at a show after he saw her throwing herself around in the pit; when he took her clothes off her piece by piece, she was covered in bruises, this tiny girl with ribs poking out of her skin covered in black and blue.

He knew that she was fucked-up—that was both pretty obvious and part of the attraction, really—but he hadn’t expected her to start screaming when he started fucking her.

He didn’t want his parents to wake up, so he did what he had to; put a hand over her mouth with his dick still hard inside of her, holding her down so they she couldn’t run away and scream up the house, and whispering whatever came into his head to calm her down. Just thoughts, snippets of other people’s poetry, and his own, and eventually she stopped screaming and squirming and just listened to him, her face pressed close to his and his hand still over her mouth.

Once she was quiet he took his hand off her mouth and let her talk, tell him about her dad and what he’d done to her, and he’d felt sick (pulled out) but kept listening. When she was done, the poison drained out of her and into Pete’s head, he told her that it was okay, that what he’d done to her wasn’t her fault, that she was a stronger person now and could turn that pain into art, turn shit into gold.

He was eighteen and kind of freaked out; he doesn’t really remember what he said. But he’s pretty sure that was the gist of it.

The next time he saw her was maybe two months later, and she came right up to him and hugged him. She’d started a band, and after he promised to come see one of her shows, she clutched his hand and thanked him. “Thank you for sharing your message with me,” is what she said, and Pete can still remember how her eyes glowed. That was the first time anyone ever called it a message, the weird shit that poured out of his head, and it felt good, to have affected someone like that, to know that what he says means something to someone.

It always feels good. Sometimes he worries about that, that maybe he’s addicted to that feeling—he has an inherent distrust for anything that he enjoys too much; it always comes back to bite him in the ass somehow (see: all his former girlfriends). He worries that maybe he’ll keep talking long after he has nothing left worth saying, that maybe even now he’s just coasting on good intentions, but they keep listening; they keep needing him back. And he guesses that’s good enough.

4

got a sunset in my veins  
and I need to take a pill to make this town feel okay  
(the best part of believe is the lie)  
\--Fall Out Boy: Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year

Of course, in hindsight, Pete realizes that he went overboard with the pills. It was the first time in a long time that he’d let go of his control over himself, let himself be altered by an outside influence, and as in everything, he tested his own limits and took it to excess.

After his years of teenage experimentation, he’d always kept edge because he didn’t trust himself before that, thought that he had to be in total control of everything at all times, including himself. Especially himself. He didn’t know what he was capable of without that control. He didn’t know what he would do.

Now he’s older—he’s tested most of his limits and he knows everything he’s capable of, every little thing, so it feels safe enough to let go of some of that control. He can delegate and let other people take care of the things that he doesn’t have the time to do; he can do what he needs to do without doubting every little thing, every thought he has and every action that he takes.

He can take the pills now and stay in control of it, only taking what he needs. What he needs varies according to how he feels at the moment, of course, but he’s smart. He knows better than them, the doctors and the shrinks and the other people who think they know his brain and his body better than he does, so he takes what he needs when he needs it. When he wants it.

But at the time, he didn’t have that control. There were too many things going on, too much for him to handle—the movement was bigger than ever, and they’d just recorded the album that he knew would spread it even further, maybe further than Pete could handle. He was constantly working, constantly thinking, constantly planning, and he just wanted his brain to shut the fuck up, just for a little while. And then those little whiles, those vacations from reality, became longer and longer, and then the pills fucked him up worse and he had to take more, to fix himself, and then nothing could be fixed anymore, nothing at all.

That’s part of being a visionary, he knows—you feel the pains of the world more deeply. You’re tested.

He failed.

5

so give in or just give up  
\--Fall Out Boy: Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year

But that’s part of the redemption cycle, right? You’re tested, you fall, you rise again from the ashes, bigger and brighter than ever. And he did that, pulled himself out of the black hole he’d sunk into, clawed his way out and made himself better.

He’ll never let himself get to that point again, he knows. He’s been there, he’s hit the bottom, and he’s come up again, back up for air, back into the sunlight. Now he’s okay, better than okay.

Now, he’s totally in control, of everything. Now, he knows everything that he’s capable of.  



	2. The Continuum

1

lemme get control  
i’ve got your minds  
now I want your soul  
\--The Germs: Shut Down (Annihilation Man)

The first time Pete saw The Decline of Western Civilization, he was fourteen years old. He’d heard most of the bands that were in it, or heard of them, at least, but there was something about live performance, even on video, that was different than anything filtered through a production studio. Live performance was never perfect, because nothing could really be perfect—live performance was raw, real, truthful in a way that an album never could be.

He hadn’t been to his first show yet—all he had was video. But it was enough.

There were better bands in the movie, bands with better lyrics and better music and better singers, but for some reason Pete couldn’t stop watching the section about the Germs. By the time he’s fifteen he’s worn out that section on the tape, so that the already barely comprehensible words of “Manimal” are stuttered, Darby Crash’s face overwhelmed by the whitewash of static as he breaks open eggshells in a nondescript kitchen.

Years later, he realizes that he recognized something in Darby Crash, something like himself. Diluted by drugs, undeveloped, yeah, but still a commonality in vision and personality. Their methods are different, mostly, but they’d both come to the same conclusion early in life: the world was fucked up, people were fucked up, and the best way to fix that was for someone better and smarter to come in and take control. And if someone could be controlled, then they should be—things are meant to be used, that’s why they’re there.

At the time, though, he’s just fascinated, without really knowing why. He reads everything he can about the Germs, talks to other kids in the scene, finds out whatever he can about Darby. He meets older punks with Germ burns—it’s easy to tell the real ones from the fakes, because the real ones have the burn in their eyes, not just on their wrists—and talks to them, about Darby and Circle One, about the old days of punk. It takes a lot to get them to talk openly and honestly, he has to prove himself time and time again (except to the ones who see it too, see what he shares with Darby), but it’s worth it, to hear about him from someone who was really there.

He always knew how important music was, the music and the words. Darby’s followers taught him about the power of persona, about force of personality as weapon; about methods of reaching people that he wouldn’t even have thought of, sex and drugs and those obvious buttons that everyone has, but so few people think to use: people’s desire to be liked, their desire to please; their desire for a leader, someone with a vision and a plan to lend some sort of meaning to their lives; their sense of self-loathing and how much it means if someone tells them they’re special and unique, or if someone tells them they’re tiny and useless, but can be made better.

Times are different now, of course. He has MTV, the internet, methods of spreading his message further than Darby could never dream of, and so his movement is bigger than Darby’s ever was, hundreds of kids wearing the bartskull and thousands singing along to Pete’s words. He has no way of knowing if his message will last as long, but he thinks, believes, that it will—that someday some kid, with some technology far in the future, will watch footage of Pete screaming onstage and be drawn to him for some inexplicable reason, the circle continuing unbroken.

2

i hope this ship burns before it sinks. i hope this planes air goes bad before it crashes.  
\--blogspot journal, 6/19/07

A lot of Pete’s idols have committed suicide—Ian Curtis, Elliot Smith, Kurt Cobain. Darby Crash. This makes sense to him, for several reasons. After a certain point, every leader becomes redundant to their own message; the movement becomes bigger than the individual. At that point, those who haven’t planned every aspect of their ascent to the top, like Pete has, cut out because they can’t take the pressure, can’t stand that their message has spun out of their control; those who have planned their ascent cut out because they feel their own redundancy to be a failure.

And in a way, death is the better option; better at least than sticking around and spinning out of control, taking your movement down with you. That’s what Gabe doesn’t realize—if he goes down, they all go down, and their entire movement along with them. And for Gabe, whose message is all about the here and now—the momentary rush of a fuck, a punch, a song, spread out as long as possible to counteract the deadening effect of the world—that’s acceptable, but Pete wants more than that. He wants his message to last longer than him, longer than anything; to be the one thing in the world that does last.

Pete will martyr himself, live on in legend, before he takes his movement down with him. Like Kurt said—better to burn out than fade away. Crash and burn, the motto Pete tattooed on himself before he even realized what it really meant.

That’s why he doesn’t call his overdose a suicide attempt. A cry for help, definitely; a breakdown, yes, but not a suicide attempt. When he goes, it will be deliberate and strategic; not a true death at all, but a form of immortality, his message and his movement living on forever after him.

3

you'll never make me leave  
i wear this on my sleeve  
give me a reason to believe  
\--My Chemical Romance: Thank You For The Venom

Gerard Way was a surprise to him. When he first saw Gerard perform, his wild energy and the hold he had over the kids, he thought that he would be the same offstage—charismatic, wild, gleefully malevolent. Instead, Gerard is quiet and almost shy when he isn’t drunkenly expansive, gawky and awkward when he isn’t still and beautiful, articulate and intelligent even while babbling about comics. He doesn’t seem to crave the attention that he recieves, doesn’t need it the way Pete does—it’s clear when he’s onstage that he revels in it, but he would be perfectly happy behind the scenes as well, doing his little drawings and living an anonymous life.

He’s only here to save people. To save the kids. When he talks about it, fingers clenched tight around a cigarette, his eyes burn with so much belief that Pete almost believes in him, too. Wants to believe in something, anything, that fervently and deeply and truly.

He knows that sort of unwavering belief in anything ultimately has to be false. Life isn’t that simple or that certain. Life is contradiction, paradox—nothing is true, so everything is true. Truth is what you make of it, and the one who says it loudest and most convincingly is the prophet, the truth-teller.

Gerard’s words might be a little more convincing, but Pete can scream pretty fucking loud. So basically, they’re about even.

Still, even knowing that, sometimes he’s jealous of Gerard. Gerard had a genuine revelation, a true moment of realization. He has an honest-to-God vision, a plan, a dream for the future and the present. He has a hold on the kids and he doesn’t even realize it, doesn’t need it, doesn’t use it the way that Pete does. Even when Pete tries to talk to him about it, tell him how much more he could do if he’d just use his influence, make the kids do what he wants instead of following their own disparate, fucked-up visions, he just shakes his head. “That’s what it’s all about,” he says, looking at Pete with something almost like pity in his eyes. “It’s about them, and their plans. They’re the future, so the vision has to come from them, not from me. I’m just the messenger—they’re the message.”

The message is whatever you make it, Pete thinks, but he doesn’t say anything. Gerard’s movement is it's own thing, isn’t a threat to Pete's, and Gerard has no interest in making it one. That’s all he needs to know.

4

'cause I know it's just a game  
but I'm playing it to win  
i won't forget from where I came  
but it's time to take over  
\--Cobra Starship: Being From Jersey Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry

Gabe is a lot like Gerard, in that he didn’t just come to it naturally, like Pete did. He had a moment of revelation, a vision in the desert that told him who he was and what he had to do, who gave him his purpose.

Okay, so maybe not exactly like Gerard—the drugs probably had a lot to do with it, too.

Pete knew Gabe before his little trip to the desert, of course. Back then he’d mostly been your basic serial killer in the making, using his shows to round up kids for his basement. Some of the kids came out blinking and bruised, and some didn’t come out at all, at least according to the rumors, but that was it. He just took from them, he didn’t give anything back—no message, no meaning behind any of it. Pete had seem him during Warped turning kids out of his bus, the way they stumbled as they walked away, the way Gabe shut the door to the bus without a thought, as though the kids meant nothing, less than nothing to him.

It was when Fall Out Boy was getting big, when all their friends back home were watching, that Gabe went to the desert. The next New York show Fall Out Boy played, Gabe showed up backstage—fuck knows how he slipped in, his name certainly wasn’t on any list security had—and told Pete about his vision, the new songs he was writing, his plans for the future. Pete hadn’t really liked being around Gabe before that, his eyes were too flat and dead, like a shark’s, but at that time, there seemed to be something behind them, something real. He gave Gabe his number, the one only a few people had, and waited for the tracks to end up on his voicemail.

Pete had thought that Gabe had changed, that maybe now he’d use that talent and that charisma for the good of someone other than himself.

Pete, of course, was wrong, but it’s too late now. Gabe’s his, for better or for worse. At least for now.


	3. The Rescuers

1

put your ear to the speaker and choose love or sympathy  
but never both  
\--Fall Out Boy: XO

For some reason, Pete almost always finds himself with women—girls—who are unable to truly receive the message. He wonders about that, about his attraction to women who don’t take his words as gospel, who don’t see the truth that is so evident to everyone else who hears it.

He thinks that maybe it’s the novelty that attracts him—sometimes its good to be around someone who doesn’t give a fuck about what he has to say, who thinks he’s special even without his message, or even doesn’t think he’s special at all. In his darker moments, he thinks its because they remind him of who he really is beneath it all, the same fucked up kid spouting bullshit, just to a bigger audience. Sometimes he thinks that maybe it’s impossible for someone to love him and believe in him at the same time. (And of course worry leads to worry leads to worry: what does that mean about his followers? His band? Patrick?)

And sometimes he thinks that he deliberately chooses girls who are fucked up in all the wrong ways, just because he likes the challenge, the fight. Sometimes he likes it when he doesn’t win.

Morgan was his first real failure, the first one that mattered. There were other girls before her, of course, but she was the one he thought would stand by his side as he rose to the top. She listened attentively as he delivered the message to her; she handed out fliers and plastered up posters on dark streets late at night, for him; she stood in crowds and smiled up at him from the floor while the kids screamed around her. He’d thought she was his, effortlessly his, but he thought wrong.

After they were over, she told everyone who would listen that she’d been part of the message, part of the songs that he used to deliver it, and she was so fucking proud of that fact. She’s still a follower, apparently—he sees her at every home show with tears in her eyes, and she spreads the word like a missionary among the kids in Chicago. She was the first girl who had more loyalty to the message than she had to him, but she wasn’t the last. He’s learned from his mistakes with her—he makes sure now that everyone important knows that he is the message, that they’re one and the same. It’s a lie—the message, the movement, is bigger than him, bigger than anything that only lives once—but it’s close enough to the truth, and safer.

He wants someone who can love them both, the message and the messenger, even though he’s pretty sure he’ll never find her.

2

“I don’t know that she cares about the songs as much as everybody else who listens to them does.”  
\--Pete Wentz, Rolling Stone

With Jeanae, he tried over and over again to get her to see it, to really hear him, and she never did. Even when he interspersed his words with punches to the wall or her car window, bleeding for her from his body and his mind, she’d just scream back at him and then go silent, waiting for him to stop.

Maybe that’s why he could never let her go, why even now he can’t really let her go. If she’d ever bent to him, accepted the truth of his message, then maybe he’d be able to, maybe she’d lose her fascination for him, but she never did. She always fought, always threw his words and his actions back into his face like they were nothing.

“You can’t play those fucking bullshit power games with me, Pete. I’m not like your fucking followers,” she’d hiss at him, and she never was. Rolling her eyes when he talked about his message and the work that he was doing, smirking around her cigarette while he talked to the kids out in the parking lot after a show, staring blankly up at him during a show while the crowd around her roared--no, she was never a follower.

Their last fight, the last time he saw her, was the closest he ever got to breaking her down so that he could build her up shiny and new. They’d been fighting about her inability to listen, to fucking listen to him and let him save her, and she’d started crying. She rarely cried, even when he first met her, when she was so fucking young, but she cried then.

“I love you, I fucking love you, isn’t that enough?” she’d asked. Her mascara had turned the hollows beneath her eyes black and wet, and she looked like a corpse, like kids Pete had left in dumpsters and bar bathrooms across the country. She was still so beautiful.

It wasn’t enough. It’s never enough, even when he wishes it could be. After that he knew it was over—she’d didn’t understand, couldn’t grasp what he was trying to do, would never be saved because she didn’t want to be. He had to let her go out into the world on her own, to see for herself how wrong and fucking twisted it is, so that she’ll come back to him on her own, ready and willing to receive his message.

He has faith in her, that someday she’ll come back to him. He’s still waiting.

3

had a dream where i picked orange leaves from blonde hair in moonlight.  
and im left forever edning signals back to you in black night.  
\--blogspot journal, 11/06/2006

Ashlee doesn’t get the message either, even though she doesn’t fight it the way Jeanae did, the way his other girls have. She just doesn’t hear it at all, doesn’t leave her mind open enough for him to slip inside of it.

He’s sees it all the time now, that Hollywood glint covering pure meaninglessness—people who are told so often that the most insignificant parts of their lives are important that they eventually realize that nothing is significant, nothing means anything, so why not go out and party, kill your brain cells with coke or speed or whatever they’re passing around the bathroom. People who are so absorbed in their own reflection that they can’t see anything outside of it, can’t hear a word that isn’t in reference to themselves and their careers, their glamorous selves. It’s harder to spread his message in Hollywood, to speak his words into that void, but the payoff is worth it—the kids can only carry the message so far, he can only carry the message so far. He needs other artists, from other genres, actors and directors and producers to carry the message on to the kids who wouldn’t listen to Fall Out Boy if someone paid them. He needs people with money, willing to invest in him and his message.

That’s not Ashlee’s thing, though, the drugs and the backroom sex, unless it’s with him. Instead she swallows pills to kill her appetite, starves her brain, then feeds it alcohol until it spins. He knows how that feels now—alcohol doesn’t mix well with some of his meds but he mixes them anyway, until he spins with her. He whispers his words to her beneath an alcohol haze and she smiles at him, but it never, ever penetrates beneath the shine of her eyes. His message slides right off of her shiny surface, never reaching the real girl that he knows is underneath, the one he sees in flashes sometimes when the cameras aren’t on them, when she smiles at him over coffee and brushes her toes against his under the breakfast table.

When she turns, if she turns, he knows that she’ll be a true believer. The religious ones are hardest to break down, but the easiest to build up—the foundation is already there, you just have to build up the house around it. Once she believes in him, maybe he’ll lose his interest in her, maybe not, but either way she’ll be useful to the movement.

He wonders sometimes what it says about him that he can be that mercenary even in love, that even his closest relationships need to have an ulterior motive now for them to be worth it to him. But then Ashlee smiles at him and he sees that flash, that spark of possibility inside of her, and he thinks that it doesn’t matter—this is still real, no matter what his motives were, or are. He says it and it becomes true—this is love, for however long it lasts.


	4. The Carriers

1

i know that you would be there either way  
(hey chris, you were our only friend)  
i’m so glad it seems like these times will never fade  
(i know this is belated, but we love you back)  
\--Fall Out Boy: Grenade Jumper

oh what a monster we’ve created.  
\--FBR journal, 2/28/2006

Pete hadn’t had to get rid of anyone in a while, and never anyone really important, but he considered it with Chris. Not that Chris ever said anything explicitly dangerous—he was smart enough not to say anything that would make himself too much of a liability, and besides, he knew that anything he accused Pete of, he would be implicated in as well—but he damaged Pete’s credibility. Pete hadn’t even noticed, had thought that Chris was another part of his movement, but Chris had slowly been building up his own crowd of followers, kids who didn’t give a shit about Pete or his message, but would follow Chris to the ends of the earth and back.

And after shit went down between him and Chris, some of the kids who had previously been his—not kids that he had personally introduced to the message, of course, but the ones who got it secondhand from the music or one of the followers or even Chris himself—jumped ship, publicly denounced Pete and all he stood for, or that they thought he stood for. When that happened, Pete started doubting himself, his decision to include Chris in the movement in the first place, his own capability to select those who would be true followers from the crowd of unbelievers.

He had to admit to himself that he’d always known that Chris wasn’t a follower, not really; the message he followed was close to Pete’s, but not Pete’s own, and as a result he was susceptible only to a certain degree, never truly obedient. Chris was there so long as Pete’s agenda matched his own, and no further. Pete had always known that, and he’d kept Chris around because he was loyal to a fault, and he agreed with Pete’s message, but mainly because he liked him. That was a weakness, but it’s one that he indulges again and again, even as it continues to bite him in the ass.

Wanting to get rid of Chris was injured pride as much as anything else. He realized it, even at the time, even through the blinding rage, which is why he didn’t. He knew that he would regret it later, would let his anger fuck him up and fuck him over, ruin everything. By that time, the movement wasn’t just him and his bands and a hundred or so kids scattered throughout the country. It was bigger than that, bigger than him, and he couldn’t fuck it up for the sake of his a fucking pissing contest with a former follower. He had to let it go.

But of course, he never really lets anything go, and usually it pays off. He thinks he’s slowly starting to win Chris back, though. Whether it’s the media saturation or the presence of Bill and Travis and Mikey in Chris’s life, or just Chris coming back to the fold for his own reasons, Chris seems to be softening towards Pete. He stills talks derisively about Fall Out Boy in comparison to his punk rock idols, but he of all people always knew that Fall Out Boy was just the vehicle, not the message itself.

Eventually Chris will come back to the fold, and Pete will welcome him with open arms. Until then he’s just a lurker, like all the other fucked up kids, reading Chris’ words in hopes that eventually he’ll find what he wants to hear.

2

i am tired of constantly defending this, its enough to defend it to the world- but to defend it to believers has drained me.  
\--blogspot journal, 6/14/2007

The rest of his friends—followers, devotees, chosen, whatever you want to call them—more than make up for Chris’ abandonment of the cause. Almost always.

Andy and Joe, they’re solid, as much as anyone can be. Andy questions him sometimes—capitalismcarbonemissionsculturalimpact—but he understands the necessities of this movement, of any movement, and instead of challenging Pete, he comes up with ways to help him, methods to work the system from within it. “At the point we’re at,” he says, pushing his glasses up his nose, “until the system can be overthrown, all we can do is minimize harm and maximize our impact. Our generation is fucked. The kids, they’re the future, the real revolutionaries. We’ll be up against the wall with the rest of them, but that’s okay, you know? It’s the price of change. We just have to get through to the kids.”

Joe never questions anything, he just takes it all in stride. He’s not as helpful as Andy, doesn’t have as many ideas (except for the first, the band itself, Patrick), but he’ll never waver. He’s been Pete’s since he was fifteen years old, just a baby. Sometimes Pete worries about the drugs, but for the most part they just seem to make him mellow, even more susceptible to everything Pete says. He can’t say that’s a bad way for Joe to be.

The others have been cause for concern, at times. William and Travis and their connection to the Cobra; Ryan and his boys, threatening to overwhelm Pete’s movement with their sudden, inexplicable popularity; even Patrick’s little converts, the Hush Sound, with their refusal to spread the message directly, person to person. “It just seems…crass,” Greta said, wrinkling her nose, the first time she watched a conversion, so they stick to reaching believers only through their music, with the safety of the barricade between them and the kids.

All of them have questioned Pete at various times. Never about the message, but about his methods, or various things in his personal life—the girls, the drinking, the pills. Nothing in his life is ever personal, not really, not anymore, which is why they feel free to comment on it—after all, as much as they belong to him, he belongs to them; their leader, their visionary--but what they don’t get is that everything he does is part of the message. He is the message, the living embodiment, so nothing he does can be wrong. It’s all a part of his plan.

It’s only when the questions become challenges to his authority that it becomes a problem. Gabe has become a problem, at various times, and so have William and Travis. They won’t take steps against him, but with Gabe around, they’ll never be entirely his, either. They were his first, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll be his last, that their loyalty is to anything more than his power and his influence.

They’re still essential members of his movement, but he doesn’t—can’t—rely on them to be there all the time. That’s why he has to keep recruiting, searching out younger bands, younger artists to spread his movement further. He wants William and Travis, but he doesn’t need them, not anymore, and he’ll make sure that he never will again.

If there’s one thing this life has taught him, it’s that he can never rely on anyone. Except maybe Patrick.


	5. The Brilliant

1

patrick is my dean. he keeps the car between the lines. he unlocks the secrets. he is the conversation. he is the magic. i know i am sal and i feel damn lucky to have the wind blowing in the thru the windows as he keeps us at 80mph. make no mistake, there is a difference between a parlor trick and true blue magic. i will remember this til the day i die.  
\--buzznet, 7/31/2007

The closest Pete’s come to revelation is when he first heard Patrick sing.

He wasn’t expecting it, or anything like it. Patrick was just another kid to him, not even like the kids he picked up, skinny and bruised and fucked up, the kids Pete wanted to be like and just wanted. He was cheery, and chubby, and he gasped just a little when he first met Pete’s eyes, like most kids did. Pete was used to it by then.

On drums, he was nothing special; Pete crossed him off the list almost as soon as he started playing. When Patrick rattled off a list of other instruments he played, Pete gave him the chance to prove himself on one of them out of generosity; when he asked Patrick to sing, it was just to see if he would bend to the request, since he clearly didn’t want to.

But he did bend, opened his mouth and sang out the words exactly the way Pete had been waiting to hear them without even knowing that he was waiting, and Pete’s entire life changed. His movement changed, what little idea of a movement he had back then, twisting and expanding to fit Patrick in, right at the center.

He doesn’t trust it at first, of course. He never trusts anything that seems to good to be true; he’s seen the black center too many times, the snakebite, the bitter pill in the center of the sugar. Good things rarely last, for him. It takes him a long time to work up to working on Patrick, to showing him the message in anything other than scribbled lyrics and quick touches, getting him used to belonging to Pete . Years and guitarists and an album later, once Andy joins, he knows that they’re stable, complete enough to work on the most important part.

Patrick takes more time to convert than anyone else ever has, but part of that is on purpose. Pete needs to make sure that he’s perfect, has to break him down and put him back together in such a way that he fits into all of Pete’s empty spaces, completes him like a jigsaw puzzle. And besides, he likes the process. He loves it. He draws it out so that the memory won’t just be a few hours condensed into minutes, a few days condensed into hours in his memory. It takes weeks, months, to get Patrick exactly where he wants him, and he knows that the memory will last a lifetime.

He could have broken Patrick down further. At the point where Patrick became his, Joe’s belt wrapped around his wrists and Andy’s shirt around his eyes and Pete’s cock inside of him, so they were all a part of it, Pete could have pushed him further, harder, could have broken him completely, so that he would never be anything other that Pete’s. A few more words, an hour or even a minute longer, is all it would have taken.

Instead, Pete pulled the cloth from around his eyes, freed his hands from the belt, and smiled down at him, into Patrick’s open, bewildered eyes. “You’re here,” he said, stroking Patrick’s hair away from his face, his cock still pulsing inside of him, connecting them. “You’re mine.”

And Patrick said, “Yes.”

*

Pete could have broken him down further, but he didn’t want Patrick broken like that. He didn’t want a zombie, didn’t even want the level of unquestioning devotion that he receives from most of his followers. He wanted Patrick to be himself, to still belong to himself instead of being entirely Pete’s. He’s Pete’s voice, yeah, but ownership goes both ways—the things you own also own you, like Palahnuik said, and Pete wants to be owned by a real person. By Patrick.

It means that Patrick rebels sometimes. He’ll get distracted by music that isn’t part of Pete’s message, music of his own, with his own words. Sometimes they’re songs about Pete, or about the message, but Pete still finds it—not threatening, it’s not, he knows Patrick is his. Just…not right.

It means that sometimes Patrick drifts from him, questioning his movement and his methods, not with his mouth but with his eyes, watching and silently judging disapproving. He’s only really tried to leave a few times, framing it as “taking a break” from the band and the pressures of the industry, not from Pete, not from the movement, as though they aren’t all one and the same. Pete always convinces him to come back with lips and words and attention just on him, not on the new kids, new bands he’s constantly on the watch for, but it’s always a little bit terrifying. Which is part of why he enjoys it so much, maybe.

It always hurts when Patrick pulls away like that, but it’s okay. It just means that Pete gets to do it all over again, make Patrick his, again, and it’s like new every single time. It’s just like with the girls—his favorite piece of Patrick is that piece that’s distant from him, the part he can never really touch, the in the back of his eyes that Patrick keeps hidden from him. He’ll never stop trying to make Patrick entirely his, but he’ll never give it his full effort, either, always stopping just short. That way he always has something to work towards, a reason not to give up. Something to live for, just like he’s always needed.

*

The only thing Patrick’s ever really challenged him on, emphatically, vocally, are the songs.

The first time Patrick punched him, over lyrics in the bridge of a song that didn’t even end up on the album, Pete surprised himself, because he didn’t even feel angry. There was the slow boil underneath his skin, yeah, of an impeding fight/fuck/whatever, but the usual rage wasn’t underneath it. Instead he felt elated, that Patrick cared so much about his message, about the best way to spread it as far and wide as possible. Patrick wasn’t just going along with it anymore, following Pete’s lead—he was invested, putting every piece of himself into the movement, into Pete, and he was willing to fight for those pieces, for the message.

Pete could see, right then, exactly what Patrick could become, with Pete’s guidance. Not just a follower, but a part of Pete himself—his voice, his music, his tie to the earth when his plans were dragging him off into space too fast for him to catch up with.

Patrick still had to be punished with hands and tongue and teeth, of course, reminded of who was really in charge, but the lyrics went. The song sounded better without them.

*

Ever since his time in the basement (and Pete will never forgive himself for that, never, but he’ll also never bring himself to regret it, because Patrick was so strong and beautiful and his down there, and that sort of proof is worth anything), Patrick has become much more aware and involved. Pete’s always tried to protect him from the technicalities and the necessities of making his movement what it needs to be, tried to let him just focus on the music, but now Patrick pays attention. More than pays attention—he digs, asking questions about the beginning of the movement, what Pete’s had to do in the past to maintain it, what his plans for the future are.

He wants to know everything.

Pete worried about that at first, that Patrick wouldn’t be able to handle it. In some of his worst moments of self-doubt, he thought that Patrick would see him, the real him, the darkest part of him that’s buried beneath the image he presents to everyone else, buried beneath the message. That he would leave. None of that has happened, though. Instead, Patrick has just become…focused.

That’s why Pete doesn’t doubt himself anymore, not seriously. Patrick has seen the real him, and he’s still here, working harder than ever to spread the truth of Pete’s message. If Patrick still believes in him, in his truth, even after knowing everything, then it must be real.

If anyone can tell the truth from the lie, the reality from the fiction Pete himself has created, it’s Patrick. And he believes.

**Author's Note:**

> The chapter titles come from the Infinity On High tarot cards.


End file.
